LEONARDO – experience a masterpiece – is a very clever and beguiling guide to the creation of Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks. The painting took 25 years to create and this ‘experience’ draws you into Leonardo’s studio, the light he might have used to illuminate models, the composition, materials, early use of oil paint and the fabulous atmosphere of this extraordinary painting which is on show at London’s National Gallery.
A focus on Freud. Lucian Freud recorded his own face and body throughout his artistic career. A fascinating show at the Royal Academy, London, collates some of the best – from early pencil sketches made in his confident youth to reflective soul-bearing and the impasto features of a very private artist, striving to understand what he sees, made right at the end of his life.
Gauguin portraits at the National Gallery – a fabulous show which assembles sensitive self-portraits and psychological impressions of sitters – offers a fascinating chronology of the artist’s work.
Elizabeth Peyton: Aire and Angels – a major exhibition of her portraits has opened at the National Portrait Gallery. Paintings made in the last ten years have been distributed amongst the permanent collection provoking interesting opportunities to compare and contrast.
Pushing Paper: contemporary drawing from 1970 to now and a fabulous show of prints by Käthe Kollwitz make a trip to the British Museum (Room 90) a must for anyone who is as fascinated as I am by the potential of paper and the power of drawing.
Hackney Wicked lives up to its name with a wicked summer arts festival which takes place in the shadow of the Olympic Park and offers a chance for artists occupying studio space in crumbling warehouses to fling open their doors and allow us to survey, review and delight in the creativity that blooms in east London.
Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet is the subject of a major exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art. This curious artist was Swiss by birth and Parisian by nature; he evolved from a precise, conventional painter into a witty and original observer of his adopted city’s life, paying special attention to the naughtiness of the 5.00pm assignations between men and their mistresses and capturing the hurly burly of human life in a series of fabulous, spare, black and white wood blocks which made his name.
Just who is Cindy Sherman and how does she manage to become so many fictional people? She convincingly portrays imagined histories of invented characters created by the clever use of make-up, wigs, prosthetics, props and costumes. The UK’s first retrospective of her work is now on show at the National Portrait Gallery. It presents a fascinating array of oddness, wit, manipulation, playfulness and unsettling impressions of imagined ‘selves’.
